Meet Fernando Habegger:The Dirty-Dealings of JNandez87

Fernando Habegger, better known as JNandez87, is a Pot Limit Omaha player and coach. He's no doubt proven to be successful on the felt, but his unscrupulous business dealings have made him an untrustworthy character in the poker space...

...especially the time he stiffed a scarf-knitting mom out of 100+ hours of work (more on this in a minute).

Fernando began making PLO content for this website in late 2016. In October 2017, he developed the PLO Lab, a subscription-based training course that would be updated monthly with new content. Fernando himself pushed the Upswing team to launch a subscription PLO course, promising he was in it for the long haul.

However, after just 3 months of making PLO Lab content--and after selling hundreds of 6-month and 12-month subscriptions--Fernando "JNandez" Habegger quit the PLO Lab to start his own training site. In other words, Fernando broke his promise to both the Upswing team and his subscribers. (6-month and 12-month subscribers were given a pro-rate refund.)

Suspiciously, Fernando Habegger appeared on the PokerMindCoach podcast 2 months before his decision to quit Upswing to discuss his "burning bridges approach to starting his professional career."

But it gets so much worse.

Less than two months after launching his own site, three members of Fernando's content team quit--including his lead content creator. The primary reason is still unknown to the public, but this TwoPlusTwo thread sheds some light on what happened.

The thread is titled "JNandez87 owes me money and is ignoring me" and the original post reads:

A little backstory. I have worked with JNandez since day 1 of the PLO Lab and I was the lead content creator for the JNP Mastermind. 2 Months ago me and 2 other members of the JNP team resigned from the company.

Before we left I had made a deal with JNandez that my mom would hand knit scarfs for him that he would sell as merchandise. After I parted ways with JNandez I wanted to ship the scarfs out to him and for him to pay so my mom can get the money that she is owed. It has been over a month now and I have tried reaching out to both JNandez, and his sidekick Orestto multiple times and I have simply been ignored.

Despite my mom being a fast knitter the scarfs still take at least 3 hours to create. This means that she hand knit scarfs for a little over 100 hours for JNandez and he is ignoring requests to pay her.

The poster, horseofhell, also included screenshots of Fernando agreeing to the payment on Discord chat. And I can't go on without showing you the scarves in question:

Fernando's reply was, in this writer's opinion, unsatisfactory at best:

I've told Filip I will pay for the scarf when I get them. Unfortunately I can't trust him anymore and will therefore not send the money before I got the scarfs.

PS: They didn't resign, I ended the relationship and for good reason.

Most responders in the thread had a simple message: "Pay that man his money."

Upswing co-founder Doug Polk also chimed in with a warning:

Fernando has had several instances of unethical behaviour and I would strongly advise against working with him in any capacity.

The original poster, horseofhell, replied to Doug:

I agree with this statement. And that is coming from someone that was working very close to him for close to a year. There are many more instances that havent seen the light of day either.

It wouldn't take long for the "many more instances" to come to light.

A few days later, Doug posted a youtube video about the scarf incident in which he poked fun at Fernando. Fernando responded with an hour-long video in which he falsely claimed this website owes him ~$100k. Doug, in his own video, revealed financial information proving Fernando's claim false.

These events compelled horseofhell to post again, this time on both Reddit and TwoPlusTwo, detailing why he and two of his colleagues quit the JNandezPoker team (see the post here). Among the allegations:

"Fernando scammed us out of a promised 10% equity"

"Fernando had little involvement in the content creation for [his site]"

"Verbal agreements mean nothing to Fernando"

"Fernando lied to us about important matters regarding the company"

"Fernando refused to give us a contract"

Fernando's assistant replied on TwoPlusTwo contending some parts of the allegations (most notably that Fernando is still heavily involved in vetting content) while also validating others.